Saturday, September 07, 2013

Provincialism, thy name is Manhattanite.

So, the protagonist of Christian Nation, when he gets out of the JeezoNazi reeducation camp by feigning conversion, and gets assigned to a work release program doing community service at the book-burning center (I am not making this up), guess what his supervisor's name is?

Hand to God, it's "Lurlene".

Jesus wept, Fred, have you ever set foot on the far side of the Hudson in your life?

43 comments:

I knew a Charlene once. Charlene Kittle, to be precise, and from a family as hillbilly as ever moved from West Virginia to Detroit during WWII.

Knew her when I was a little boy. She was six or eight years older than me, and I worshiped the air she breathed. Lurlene happens, I guess.

Actually this morning (while cutting firewood, speaking of hillbillies) I got to thinking about JWR's book Patriots, which appears to be pretty much exactly like Christian Nation in every single way except the viewpoint is exactly opposite. Paranoid bad fiction knows no political shame. :)

I have heard the name before. Lurleen was the name of George Wallace's first wife. You may remember George from his term as Governer of Georgia back in the '60s, and from his infamous quote "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

In answer to the actual question:No, he hasn't.He flies over it and shudders at the thought of being forced by mechanical problems to land in Flyover Country and breathe the same air as the lower orders.

Your comment reminds me of Connie Chung-Povich's shock in April '95 at seeing video of the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Her shock was not at the destruction, but that the hometown boys had taken care of business. Before that, I'm pretty sure she was ready to lobby for foreign aid.

I think she was expecting Taggart (from "Blazing Saddles, not Dagny) to be leading the horse-drawn fire-brigade and Sheriff Buford T. Justice to be keeping the peace amongst the cast of "Deliverance" set in an Old Western town with a few cigar-store Indians mixed in.

I bring this up for one reason - cui bono? I don't see such a book as the sort of thing the SWPL set would really go for, and I can't see anyone forgetting their copy in the taxi on their way to the Metropolitan either. Maybe the starving artists and whomever-rights activists in Greenwich Village might wallow in it for a while, but that's a mighty small market to write to.

Not that the author might have had no conception at all of his market when he was writing this thing - worse books have happened (the only reason I first thought of Patriots rather than The Turner Diaries is that I haven't read the latter).

This leaves the distinct possibility that the author is the 2013 reincarnation of Jonathan Swift.

Well Ed, the fascist theocracy is a known know. Remember the one Palin installed in Alaska? Or the one Bush turned Texas into? Or the happy smiling church run police state Romney made of Massachusetts? For that matter, how could you have missed the religious dictatorship in the US between 2001-09?

See, everywhere right wingers have seized power we've seen this same horrible story play out.

On the other hand, despite hysterical warnings of left wing statist totalitarianism, not once in human history has one ever sprung up.

According to the Baby Name Voyager, "Lurline" was ranked as the 956th most popular female baby name in the 19-aughts, and shot up to the 850th most popular female name in the 1910's, before dropping below 1000th, and off the map. "Lurlene" isn't listed as ever being in the top 1000 in the past 120 years.

The late Governor Lurlene Wallace's short life began in 1926. She died 45 years ago.

I deal with the public daily, and In my 42 years in Texas, I have met Mildrids, and Ethels and Mabels and Velmas and Berthas and Claras and Idas, but never a Lurline/Lurlene, to my recollection.

I never knew it was an actual name. My next door neighbor growing up was Gloria Linda which was shortened to Lori Lynn and in heated moments became Lurlene. As many times as I have come across it, I always assumed that was how all Lurlenes came to be.